March 18, 2014

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS SPECIES:

By finding the lost genome, the Swedish biologist Svante Pääbo has
discovered that we are all part Neanderthal--except those with an
entirely African heritage. So I now feel like shaving my head to
celebrate the interspecies engagement of 50,000 years ago, whether or
not it is the ultimate cause for the oddity of my skull and my
occasional acts of stupidity.

Archaeologists and physical
anthropologists have long debated the evolutionary relationship between
modern humans and Neanderthals, relying on the similarities and
differences between their designs of stone artifacts and the shapes of
their bones, with little real understanding of how these might have
arisen. Interminable academic arguments have been swept away by the
revolution in studies of ancient DNA, led by Pääbo (now at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig) and brilliantly recounted in his new book, Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes.

Pääbo has provided us with a fabulous account of three decades of research into ancient DNA,
culminating in 2010 with the publication of the Neanderthal genome.